Saturdays in the Cemetery with Stine

by Nelson

Reader Beware; You’re in for a Scare!

Join us as DoubtFire ventures into the terrifying world of zombies, werewolves, egg monsters, and annoying siblings that is GOOSEBUMPS. 

Goosebumps #20 –
The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight

Unlike Deep Trouble, The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight delivers exactly what the title and cover art promise – walking scarecrows. They don’t seem to have to wait until midnight, but they’re not necessarily opposed to a 12am stroll. The point is, I went in expecting living scarecrows, and that was what I got. R.L. Stine considers this to be one of his “scarier” Goosebumps books. On some levels, I see where he’s coming from, but I’m not so sure I’d consider anything that happens to be more frightening than the extreme levels of parental neglect we’ve seen in the previous 19 entries. But it’s a matter of perspective, I suppose. When you’re twelve, you want Mom and Dad to ship you off to spend the summer with a distant cousin you’ve never met, and, if that cousin turns out to be a vampire, then that’s just a bonus. In this one, the tried and true brother/sister duo have already been sent away, and their parents don’t even make an appearance. 

Jodie and her younger brother Mark are staying at their grandparents’ farm. Unlike the old never-before-seen relative thing, this is an annual visit that the siblings look forward to because Grandma Miriam makes the best pancakes and Grandpa Kurt tells awesome scary stories. Two kids spending the summer eating breakfast and listening to stories wouldn’t make for much of a Goosebumps tale, so, of course, things aren’t quite right this time around. Grandma’s forgotten how to make pancakes, and Grandpa says he’s just plain out of stories. On top of that, Stanley, the weird farmhand, is pretty hung up on the subject of guys made of straw walking around, and his teenaged son, Sticks, keeps spouting a bunch of grim warnings about  how “different” things have become. In addition to being the sort of person who names his son “Sticks,” Stanley carries around a “superstition book” that he treats as a manual for life to such an extent that he forces Jodie and Mark to walk around a barn three times before going fishing because he believes barn circling is lucky. It seems like he’s right, too. Jodie can’t help but notice that, all of a sudden, everything’s coming up Stanley. Grandma may not remember how to make pancakes anymore, but she’s suddenly become an expert at making her farmhand’s favorite dishes, and he’s overjoyed that Grandpa ditched the scary stories because they creeped him out. Miriam and Kurt seem to be putting a lot of effort into making their longtime employee happy, and, dammit, that’s strange because their longtime employee spends healthy portion of his days mumbling about scarecrows instead of doing any actual work. 

One night Jodie looks out her bedroom window and sees scarecrows moving around in the cornrows. Her grandparents are absolutely horrified at the mention of walking strawmen and change the subject anytime it comes up, but, when Jodie mentions that she keeps seeing scarecrows moving around to Stanley, he freaks out and runs off to get his book. The siblings decide that Sticks is responsible for the hijinks, so Mark slaps a burlap sack over his head and stuffs his clothes with straw in a plan to turn the tables on the teenaged prankster. But it turns out that Sticks wasn’t playing a prank at all. He’s been trying to figure out a way to undo his father’s misdeeds the whole time. It seems that Stanley’s superstition book doubles as a spell book, and the field-hand used it to bring all the scarecrows to life and take over the farm. As long as Miriam and Kurt keep him happy, he’ll make sure the straw fiends stay on their stakes, but, dammit, if Grandma has pancakes on the breakfast table, then there’s going to be trouble. Unfortunately, Stanley’s an idiot and didn’t successfully put the scarecrows “back to sleep,” so now they’re all running wild doing mean things and getting ready to destroy everyone. Thanks to Mark’s costume, the mob of scarecrows think he’s the strawman-in-chief, so he leads them in a silent game of Simon Says that backfires when he tries to trick them into removing their heads. Just when everyone seems doomed, Sticks rushes in with a torch and saves the day. Strange no one thought of trying that before. Anyway, things go back to normal. The kids get their pancakes and their scary stories, and Stanley renounces his tyrannical ways. He doesn’t put down his superstition/spell book, though, and we end with Grandpa’s bearskin rug coming to life. 

The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight is sort of a template for the type of story we’ll be seeing a lot more of going forward – main character thinks supernatural shenanigans are cruel jokes from a bully or older sibling until they find out that it’s all real towards the end and get an assist from their rival in the finale. It’s also the alternate version of the “kids go to stay with a distant family member they hardly know and discover a twisted secret” story. If it’s a visit to a familiar and beloved relative’s house, then you can rest assured that something’s not right. At the end of the day, this one is no Scarecrow Gone Wild, but it is a perfectly serviceable tale of farming gone wrong.

“The scarecrows—!” I exclaimed breathlessly.

“They’re walking!” Mark cried. “Stanley—he—”

“Did you get Stanley upset?” Grandpa Kurt asked, his eyes wide with fear. “Who got Stanley upset? He promised us he wouldn’t do it again! He promised—if we didn’t upset him.”

“It was an accident!” I told him. “We didn’t mean to. Really!”

“We’ve worked so hard to keep Stanley happy,” Grandma Miriam said sadly. She chewed her lower lip. “So hard…”